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Pushing the Envelope wishes our readers a joyful holiday season and a prosperous new year. We will take a break this week, but we encourage you to read over the past year’s blogs and let us know what you think on any of the wide range of topics we blogged on in 2012. We also want to remind you to visit the site next Monday when we will post our list of the Top 10 Stories of the Year. As always, we look forward to your comments and insights.

Since the launch of “Pushing the Envelope” in October of 2008, we have been blogging on topics of interest to U.S. Postal Service stakeholders and the general public. We’ve published 212 blogs to date (this one makes 213). Since it is our birthday, we thought we’d take this time to reflect on the last year and to look to the future.

First, thanks to our active readers who provide insightful commentary and food for thought. Your ideas and comments can turn into audit projects, white papers, or even the need to turn something over to our Office of Investigations.

It’s been a year of major changes in the postal world. Looking over the headlines, the staff at the Office of Inspector General has pulled together the list below of the top 10 postal stories for 2011. Take a moment, read them over, and vote for your top story of the year. If you think we missed one, let us know!

10.Another Year, Another Loss – Even with a deferral of the retiree health payment, the Postal Service loses $5.1 billion in 2011, although $3.7 billion is changes to workers’ compensation expenses.

We have just been informed our post office in Pine Mountain Club Ca 93222 is being closed. We are a mountain community of 2,315 population. We have never had delivery and must go to our town PO. The...

Latest Blog Posts

Our Semiannual Report to Congress is a record of our work over a 6-month period that reflects our mission of ensuring efficiency, accountability, and integrity in the U.S. Postal Service. As required by law, we publish the SARC – as we affectionately call it – twice a year.

Another holiday season, another massive surge in package volume. This year will be bigger than the last – which was a record-breaking year. It may be an understatement to say the dramatic growth in online shopping continues unabated.

Location, location, location – it’s the mantra of realtors, of course, but is just as important to retailers and service providers, like the U.S. Postal Service. USPS understands the importance of being where people live and shop. It also knows that keeping hours conducive to people’s shopping...

Latest Audit Asks

The U. S. Postal Service has about 265 mail processing facilities nationwide. Mail processing is an integrated group of operations required to sort and distribute mail for dispatch and eventual delivery.

The Postal Service calculates productivity for its various mail processing operations...

The U.S. Postal Service delivers almost 154.2 billion pieces of mail annually using one of the largest vehicle fleets in the country, with over 214,900 postal-owned vehicles. Accurate vehicle base mileage should be established during route inspection and mileage should be monitored daily.

The U.S. Postal Service information technology infrastructure consists of facilities, equipment, services, protocols, and applications used to transmit, store, and process information. These assets are vital to business performance and must be protected.

Comments Wanted

We encourage you to visit our blog, which has a new topic for discussion every Monday. You can also give us your thoughts and opinions about upcoming audits on our Audit Asks page. Please refer to our comment policy for further information.